Dota 2: TI2: Tournament format and prize pool revealed

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NEWS

By Dean 'denik' Nikolov

Aug 18, 2012 01:09

The tournament will be accessible to watch in-game even for people who still do not participate in the Dota 2 beta.

As the long anticipated event is starting next week, Valve have updated the tournament page with more info about it -- including tournament format and schedule, prize pool, information about participating teams and, last but not least, a spectator client for those who don't have Dota 2 but would like to watch the matches in-game.

The prize pool will remain the same as last year's - an astonishing $1.6 million shared among the first eight teams. The winner team will leave Seattle with $1 million in their pockets. The runner-up will secure $250 000 and the third-placed - $150 000.

The whole prize distribution:

1st place - $1 000 000
2. - $250 000
3. - $150 000
4. - $80 000
5. - $35 000
6. - $35 000
7. - $25 000
8. - $25 000

The tournament will consist of two parts - preliminaries and main event. The preliminaries will be played from 26 to 28 August. They will take place behind closed doors - all games will be casted live with commentary (via stream or in-game) but there will be no media coverage. The first matches of the day will begin at 18:00 CEST (9:00 AM PDT).

Preliminaries format

"Prelims - will determine where teams are placed into the Winner and Loser brackets. The teams are split up into two groups of eight and each team plays the other teams in their group twice for a total of 112 games, 14 per team.

The top four teams in each group advance to the Winner Bracket. The bottom four are placed in the Loser Bracket. If tiebreaker games are necessary, they will be played after all other Prelim games are completed."

The main event will take place from 31 August to 2 September at the stage of the Benaroya Hall, Seattle. It will feature the games played in the Winner and Loser brackets as well as the Grand Final. All the matches will be available to watch with live commentary in the game client or on one of the official streams. The first matches of the day will begin at 19:00 CEST (10:00 AM PDT).

Main Event format

"The Winner Bracket
All rounds of the Winner Bracket are played as Best of 3 games. The loser in each round is sent down to the Loser Bracket.

The Loser Bracket
Rounds 1 through 4 of the Loser Bracket are played as Best of 1 game. Teams that lose a round here are eliminated from the tournament. The last two rounds of the Loser Bracket are played as Best of 3 games.

The Championship Finals
The last remaining teams from the Winner and Loser Brackets will then face off in a full Best of 5 match to determine the champion of The International."

A separate spectator client has been released and it's free to download from Steam. It consists of all the spectator features included in the main Dota 2 client. This is intended for people who still haven't received a beta key or just aren't into Dota 2. Everyone willing to try it out, should know that the spectator mode has some unique features such as: watching the matches in-game with live commentary (you can chose the commentator you like the most), free to move, directed or player perspective camera, various stats and graphs. If you've missed a game, you will be able to watch the replay at any time you want including all the features mentioned above.

In their efforts to reach maximum popularity of the tournament and please a bigger part of the community, Valve have invited an army of 23 broadcasters speaking in 3 languages - English, Chinese and Russian.

English: